OPINION

Published Monday, May 31, 2004
Diversity: An Invitation for Public Dialogue
"The challenge of diversifying the faculty of this or any other educational institution is not--nor has it ever been--a matter of competence."
By Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Dorinda Carter and Heather Harding

Posters on campus this month – featuring the faces of 12 scholars of color who have left HGSE in the past five years – drew stark attention to the lack of faculty diversity at the school, generating much conversation among students and seeming to provoke unease among some faculty and administrators. The unknown poster-makers quote Dean Lagemann repeating the mantra of historically white institutions that have failed to achieve faculty diversity: “It’s important, but so is competence.” Since then, by accusing the anonymous designers of misrepresenting faculty and of taking Lagemann’s words out of context, administrators have appeared not only at a loss for responses, but to have entirely missed the point the authors seemed to make.

It is hard to imagine exactly in what context Lagemann’s words would have been appropriate or accurate. The challenge of diversifying the faculty of this or any other educational institution is not–nor has it ever been–a matter of competence. If there is any connection between quality and diversity, it is in the inadequacy of HGSE faculty as a whole given its formidable lack of diversity. But not surprisingly, when challenged on the failure to diversify, the official discourse reverts to equating lack of diversity with lack of “competent” candidates. The racialization of academic excellence as a white character is well documented and theorized (despite the fact that this is absent in the HGSE curriculum).

The challenge of diversity in historically white institutions like Harvard has always revolved around two related problems: racism and a lack of understanding about what “diversity” means. The first is beyond the bounds of this commentary, but we will address the second, in the hopes of inviting a public conversation about the challenge of diversity at HGSE. Our argument features three key aspects of diversity, which are typically misunderstood or disregarded in addressing this challenge and go to the heart of the relationship between diversity and excellence: the unit, the scope, and the criteria for building a diverse and “competent” faculty.

The Unit of Diversity
In discussing diversity, the question that typically arises is how many members of the faculty are non-white, women, or identify with any group other than able-bodied white male heterosexuals. The more there are of “them,” the more diversity there is. This definition is misguided. Being marked “diverse” distances an individual from the “norm,” a norm that is not only racialized white, but also implicitly embodies the definition of competence. Prospective non-white faculty must legitimize their credentials and their ability to meet the standards of the “norm” while simultaneously being labeled as “other.” A competent scholar of color can never be just a competent scholar, unless s/he can “overcome” or “forget” the fact that s/he is non-white. Furthermore, this way of identifying diversity locates difference in the individual, making that individual the “unit” of diversity and placing on that individual the burden of demonstrating that s/he is capable of “excellent” work. These individuals must demonstrate that they are “competent” despite their apparently self-evident identity markers (rather than these markers being themselves associated with “competence”).

Diversity, like difference, is always relational; it describes a relationship between more than one object. Individuals are not diverse; a group of individuals, such as a faculty, can be diverse. By shifting the discourse away from individuals and toward the group as the unit of diversity, the challenge of diversifying the faculty becomes more transparent and less focused on the act of hiring individual faculty. The problem is not that excellent faculty of color are hard to find, but rather that the GSE faculty is not diverse. Thus, the “faculty of the whole” is far from “excellent.” The burden ought to be on exposing how the institution perpetuates a majority white faculty, rather than tokenizing prospective faculty of color. But what makes a faculty diverse? To answer this question, we need to consider both the scope and the criteria of diversity.

The Scope of Diversity
There is a deep connection between diversity of thought and ways of constructing knowledge, and racial, ethnic, and other forms of diversity. It is not surprising, for instance, that many of the faculty members of color departed from HGSE were also those who offered alternative epistemological, theoretical, and political positions to the dominant educational research. In fact, in these postcolonial times, people of color have been at the forefront of these developments, not because they are not competent by traditional academic criteria, but because they have identified the limitations of these ways of knowing as means to represent their experiences. Unfortunately, it is precisely this knowledge that is being rejected from the ranks of mainstream academia, not because it is not valuable (or “usable”) but because it challenges the very core assumptions that sustain social science research. These mainstream ways of knowing are seen by scholars of color as one of the primary sources of their oppression and therefore as an object of analysis and critique (like the way “competence” is racialized as white). Senior scholars of color in the field of education have long offered rigorous critiques and alternatives to these dominant ways of producing knowledge, but their work has been consistently and increasingly marginalized.

The Criteria for Diversity
Imagine reading a job posting that begins:

HGSE seeks scholars with a well-established record of scholarship in the study of and firsthand experience with racism, sexism, and homophobia in education for open rank positions.

Unlikely indeed. In the current anti-affirmative action climate, making public statements about wanting to diversify a faculty body is dangerous territory. Yet, making direct and clear statements about what a diverse faculty requires is essential. The most recent job posting announcing the current search made no mention of the goal of the school to diversify the faculty. Nothing in that call would even hint to a senior professor of color that s/he is being recruited. Avoiding diversity as part of the criteria for seeking excellent faculty is predictable. Often, when criteria are expanded to include diversity, the assumption is that the standards have been lowered.

To return to our first point, prospective faculty of color pursuing jobs at places like Harvard are expected to demonstrate that they are “the best in the world” not because of who they are, but despite it, and to demonstrate “competence” based on a set of pre-determined criteria established within the context of a historically white institution and racialized accordingly. Their own experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia and other social systems of oppression are, again, devalued or ignored, as are any critiques of the existing methods and standards for the production of knowledge. All of these are important criteria for building the kinds of substantive diversity that would make our school a thriving academic environment. HGSE should actively seek scholars who have made rigorous and outstanding contributions to our understanding of these phenomena rooted in their own experience.

Conclusion
Given how HGSE has defined diversity and pursued faculty of color, it is not surprising that excellent faculty of color are not emerging as candidates (and that we are losing those that we have!). What would be the real surprise would be if any self-respecting faculty of color would want to subject themselves to this kind of environment and discourse. If the school is truly committed to diversity, it must seriously reconsider its approach to attracting faculty.

We applaud the faculty’s decision to offer Professor Diamond a job at HGSE, and as students, we are excited to learn from him and to work with him. Before we get too excited, however, we ask the school more pertinent questions. How will he be supported as a junior faculty of color to advance his research interests and to support students who will surely flock to him? How will HGSE avoid tokenizing this young professor? How will the institution ensure that he is not labeled as THE professor of color who teaches “the race course(s)”? How will the school continue to build a community and an environment where professors like Diamond (and students of color) will thrive, and where they will actually want to stay?

We hope that the ideas presented here offer the beginning of a public dialogue about diversity, and about the necessary diversification of all the aspects of HGSE. We write “public” deliberately, because it is clear from the anonymous nature of the recent spread of information that conversations behind closed doors are no longer acceptable. Like our anonymous colleagues, we are inviting the administration and the school as a whole to step out from the veil of privacy–and secrecy–that has enveloped the school for the last two years, to speak openly, not only about diversity, but about the future and current status of our school as a whole.

Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández and Dorinda Carter are fourth-year doctoral students in Learning and Teaching. Heather Harding is a fourth-year doctoral student in Administration, Planning and Social Policy.